The Shadow of Ararat

by Thomas Harlan

  "Tribune Quintus Metelus Pius?" The trace of a whine had crept back into Colonna's voice.

  "Enter," came a gruff, distracted voice from within the tent.

  Colonna entered, followed by Dwyrin. A brass lamp illuminated the interior of the tent, casting an odd, even white light over a bed and table. The tribune was sitting behind the table on a camp stool, bent over a profusion of small metal pieces laid out on a cloth. Dwyrin started when he realized that the lamp did not contain a flame but rather a sphere of glass holding some kind of a sprite. Looking closer, he could make out a tiny face pressed against the glass and a blur of wings. The creature stared back at him, its golden eyes enormous and filled with terrible pain.

  "Ouragos Colonna of the Fourth of the Sixth of the Third, Tribune." Colonna saluted.

  The tribune looked up, his watery blue eyes barely glancing over the soldier and Dwyrin before his attention returned to the clutter of metal springs and gears on his desk.

  "Your business?" the tribune said in a disinterested voice. Colonna stood straighter.

  "This lad, Dwyrin MacDonald, is reporting for duty, sir. He had orders to travel from Constantinople to join up with your unit, sir. He was delayed and has only just arrived."

  "Oh," the tribune said, carefully fitting a toothed gear onto a tiny greased post fixed to the side of what looked like an egg made of tin. "Well, take him to Blanco and get him squared away. I think there are some empty bunks in insula four. You may go."

  Colonna paused and looked over his shoulder at Dwyrin, who was almost asleep on his feet. The confrontation in the town had been terribly draining. "Ah, sir, there is a minor problem, if I may..."

  The tribune looked up and finally put down the collection of metal parts in his hands. He ran a greasy hand through his short-cropped red hair, leaving a streak of oil and soot through one side. In the steady white light, his face was solid and handsome in a restrained way. He was not pretty, but there was something respectable about him. Dwyrin had a fleeting impression of a stolid cow with big ears in a field of hay, but pushed it away.

  "Go on," the tribune said, looking Dwyrin over at last. He raised an eyebrow at the tattered cloak with burned edges as well as the dust and grime from the road that covered the rest of the Hibernian's clothing.

  Colonna coughed and said, "The lad was attacked on the road, at the bridge over the Euphrates, and his horse and kit were lost. Can he draw new gear from stores?"

  A wintry smile flickered across the tribune's face and he leaned back from the table. "Not much to choose from, ouragos, only castoffs and dead men's kits. But the boy needs clothing and gear, so yes, I'll make out a chit for it."

  The tribune reached under the little table and there was a clattering sound. He drew a piece of broken pottery out of a bucket and scratched something on it with a pointed metal tool from the table. Colonna accepted the chit and saluted again. Dwyrin remembered to salute as well. The ouragos hustled him out of the tent.

  "Not bad," the soldier said as they walked through the lane between the tents. "You can get your kit, at least."

  They stopped near the gate and Colonna turned Dwyrin around to face him.

  "When you report to your centurion tomorrow, it will not go so easily. I know the centurion in charge of the detachment here—he's a hard-ass named Blanco. The punishment for losing your kit is severe, but if you follow his rules, you'll make it through. Now, tent four is over there."

  Colonna pressed the piece of pottery into Dwyrin's hand. "I've got to go make my report to the infantry tribune, so you go grab some sack time."

  The Sicilian hurried off down the lane, lit by drifting sparks of light, and Dwyrin turned away to stumble off to the fourth tent. He was home, he thought, at last.

  —|—

  Dwyrin stood quite still, the numb feeling in his legs sliding up into his hands. The centurion looked up. "Is there a problem, MacDonald?"

  Dwyrin swallowed. His throat was dry and filled with dust. "I have no gear sir, it was stolen when my horse was killed."

  Blanco nodded and sighed, his broad chest stretching at the light tunic that he wore. He waved toward the bunk across from the little table. "Sit down."

  Dwyrin sat.

  "Did Colonna take you to the tribune already?"

  "Yessir."

  "What did the tribune say to you, or to Colonna, about your gear, your kit? Did he say anything?"

  Dwyrin flushed and felt a hot spark kindle in his head. The patient, mocking tones of the masters he had heard many times at the academy. He hated being treated like a child, even if he was so young.

  "Sir, he said that I should draw a new kit, sir, from Stores and that I should be assigned, sir, to the..."

  Dwyrin's throat choked shut. Blanco had clenched his hand and Dwyrin's muscles contracted in a spasm. His head swam and white-hot lights began to sparkle at the edge of vision. Blood trickled into his mouth from his lip as he bit down. Power surged in the ether around him. Dwyrin's hands ground into the bunk.

  Blanco shook his head.

  "No," the centurion said, "mouthing off."

  Dwyrin's head filled with a sharp buzzing sound, like a stone saw on marble. He struggled to breathe. The hot spark sputtered in his head and guttered out. Dimly he perceived the surging green trail that wrapped his neck and danced at the slight movements of the centurion's meaty fist.

  Don't think. Colonna's voice echoed in the buzzing sound.

  Dwyrin fell limp and dropped his mind back into the beginning meditation. Vision curved and folded away from him. The light of the tallow candle spun out into the fire-form of its raw element.

  "You're slow, much too slow..." he heard echoing as consciousness suddenly left him.

  —|—

  The gargling cry of a camel he heard first, then as his eyes opened stones and gravel heaved past. Tight hands gripped him at arm and thigh. Dwyrin saw dim blue sky flash past, then the edge of a post cracked against his forehead. Old blood was in his mouth. Another pair of hands dragged his arm up and into a heavy leather thong. His eyes suddenly focused on his other hand as it too was bound into a heavy black leather loop. Beyond it he saw the great roof of the mess tent and the other pavilions. A cold wind slid between his bare legs.

  Two boys not much past his age stood at either side of the wooden frame he now hung from. To his left a short, tan, black-haired boy with a long face and thin nose, dressed in plain white shirt and trousers, was staring at him with guarded dark eyes. To his right he glimpsed a shorter and broader boy, also in plain white, with a broad round face and short blond hair. He too wore a closed look on his face, though otherwise he had the look of a merry fellow.

  One of his legs was dragged back and a wire-cored rope flipped around it three times. Dwyrin felt fear fill his body and corrode what passed for his returning consciousness.

  He knew what was going to happen next. The centurion hadn't been kidding. He was on a whipping frame, and soon some twenty-year veteran with arms like tree trunks was going to come out with a snake-lash studded with metal hasps and give him thirty or forty full strokes and his back and legs would disappear in a red mist. He gagged and a small groan escaped him.

  A sharp slap brought his head around, eyes wide. A young woman stood close to him, dragging his head back with a dark tan hand.

  "Shut up," she hissed. Her hair was dark and thick as pitch and tied back in a dull red fillet around her head. Her face, like that of the boy on the left, was thin and lean. Her eyes were a dark brown, with graceful black eyebrows above. She shook him again, her white shift falling back from a firm tan arm, and pushed his head back against the edge of the frame.

  "If you squeal like a pig, Celt, I'll make sure you never have a moment's peace here, see? You're in our five now, and if you make us look bad, I'll skin you myself."

  The girl pushed him back and then squatted down to tie his other leg to the frame. Across the little space behind the mess tent, Blanco and Colonna were sitting on a bench, drinkin
g from heavy earthenware cups. Two wooden plates sat next to them on the bench, the remains of their morning gruel clinging to the edges. They were deep in some discussion, heads bent close.

  Above the tents and the patchwork quilt of ropes, wires and threaded nets and cloth that depended from them, Dwyrin glimpsed the high peaks of the Tauris. The sun glinted from broad spearheads of snow and ice. The wind from the east bore their chill. There was a coughing sound.

  Dwyrin forced his eyes to remain open, his head to turn, slowly, to the sound of crunching gravel that heralded someone's approach. The dark-haired girl stepped back from the frame, to the side of the boys, now drawn together in a knot.

  Blanco and Colonna put down their mugs and stood up, saluting as the tribune paced into the little square. As the night before, he wore stained trousers and a rumpled shirt.

  His spectacles lent him a distracted air. He returned the salutes.

  The tribune glanced around at the preparations and sniffed. He walked to the back of the mess tent and banged on the doorpost with his fist. One of the cooks stuck his head out the canvas flap.

  "Something hot, lad," the tribune said. He turned around then, leaning against the post. He signed to Blanco and then settled back.

  Blanco stepped out into the square, hands behind his back, and cleared his throat. "The legionarius Dwyrin MacDonald, having failed to maintain his issued kit, gear and horse in good order and condition, must abide by the law, wherein five and twenty strokes of the lash will suffice to maintain discipline," he intoned.

  Then he stepped back and signed to the girl with bound hair. She stepped to the side of the frame and back a little, and shook out a long length of rawhide thong, weighted at the end, and showed it to a pale Dwyrin with a peculiarly ritualized motion. Then she went around to the back of the frame.

  Dwyrin gritted his teeth and tensed his back.

  Behind him, he heard the lash slither out, shaken free from the girl's hand. Its tip rattled across the stones and gravel. Then he felt it gathered up again in her hand. Her feet shifted on the gravel. Dwyrin's mind began yammering prayers. His hands were sweaty in the loops at the end of the ropes. The wind slid across his skin, raising goosebumps.

  "One," Blanco rumbled.

  Dwyrin flinched.

  The lash rapped hard against his back and the side of his neck, then lifted away. Dwyrin rebounded from the end of the ropes.

  "Two."

  Dwyrin gasped, the trail of fire across his back now lit and surged through him. The second stroke fell and his teeth ground down. Muscles and nerves howled in pain. He gasped again, fighting against the enormous scream that was rising up within his body.

  "Three."

  A long gargling cry slid between his teeth, and Dwyrin felt the disgusted eyes of the girl on him.

  Blood hissed in his ears as the lash lifted up, whistling, from his naked back. Again he flung forward against the ropes. A long, mewling cry bubbled from his lips and he bit down on it. His tongue spiked with pain. The hot spark at the back of his brain spun and flashed. Across the little sandy square Blanco looked up from the bench with interest. At his side the two young boys tensed, greyhounds at the leash. From the edge of his vision, in the flickering gray haze, he could catch their forms shifting in and out of awareness, first a sharp green and then a pale blue.

  The girl flipped the snake back in her hand and adjusted the leather strap on her forearm. Sweat beaded under the red fillet. She tossed her hair back out of her eyes. She squinted. The sun had now risen fully over the peaks of the Tauris and slanting rays spilled across the camp. Tentpoles and banners were picked out in the hot light.

  Dwyrin hung limp, eyes filled with tears.

  Gods, don't let her see me cry, he raged at his body. It trembled and twitched at every sound. His mind scrabbled at nerves and muscles, willing them to be still. He heard the scrape of gravel under the girl's foot as her shoulder rolled back to propel the braided snake against his raw back.

  The spark roiled and spun in darkness, drawing red rage into its heart. Blanco spread his feet and balanced himself, now poised at the edge of the circle. Colonna was sitting again, a slow smile creeping across his face. The cook appeared at the back door of the kitchens and scattered the mess boys back to their duties. Then she too leaned there, her face in shadow still under the plain lintel of the door. Her dress was blue and long, Dwyrin saw through the rippling pain, bordered with curling red and yellow flowers. The details seemed clear and fine in his sight.

  "Five," Blanco growled from the bench. Dwyrin's body betrayed him again, tensing forward, flexing the lines, and then it cast back. The lash was across his back in a bar of white fire. This time the girl had put her shoulder into the blow. The spark whistled down now into inner darkness, growing huge in his mind. Nerves screamed, grating raw stone and branch across him.

  "Six."

  "Seven."

  His voice, distantly, was a high, girlish scream, but his heart was black and filled with darkness. Blanco was smiling now, his eyes half closed, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. And Colonna was leaning back against the dull gray planks of the kitchen wall, his eyes sparkling.

  "Eight." Blanco started whistling, a little tune that ran along the scales, up and down again. Dwyrin's right eye failed, consumed by a white-hot blur of sparks only he could see. Only his left remained, filled with the sight of cracked white teeth in Colonna's mouth. He saw the centurion turn and say something to the Sicilian. The other laughed and slapped his knee. Dwyrin snarled in rage, spittle trailing from his mouth.

  "Nine."

  "Ten."

  "Eleven." The girl was pausing now, drawing out each stroke. The disgust of her gaze sank into the raw blood on his back, and he could feel the quiet laughter of the two boys. Spinning hot, the spark suddenly consumed his left eye as well and he saw nothing but staccato white and orange, shot with green and purple. Dwyrin suddenly felt his body snap away, lost in black and red pain. His mind recoiled free and he plunged into the world of forms without meditation, without trance. Power coursed, brilliant flows and patterns turned and wheeled around him. Familiar analogies and themes failed him. A shifting pattern of nothingness trapped him in a confined space. Vortices of form spun in the void around him. The familiar patterns of earth flow and life energy could not be discerned. He grasped futilely for the meditations, for his center, but there was nothing but the spinning spark, shuddering and flaking at the edges.

  A ghost rose up before him in the void of forms, each layer rotating in counter to those below; it flexed and bunched, then power leapt and cast from it. Dimly Dwyrin grasped that the girl was laying the lash against him, yet the bands of cerulean and rose that extended from the ghost did not touch him but disrupted against the nothingness. His heart expanded and the spark annihilated the nothingness. The void shattered and broke into mirrored fragments. The surging coil of the earth flow gripped him.

  His form solidified in the void. Suddenly the glowing snake shapes of the girl behind him and the boys to either side sprang into focus from the writhing maelstrom of ether. The narrow darkness of the lash flicked toward him and the hot spark flared, consuming it. Dwyrin howled soundlessly, hot yellow light rushing out from him, crashing against the pale-blue geometries that sprang into being between him and the lithe coil of the two boys.

  The ghost girl lunged, her spirit-fists red-hot with power as they smashed into him. The spark whirled and turned in his mind, shedding layers of light. Dwyrin steadied himself and lanced back, deep green-black power flowing from the earth below him. Shining brightly he gripped the dull fires of the wooden frame and leached them into his arrow-bright attack.

  The girl ghost spun and darted, her dragon coil shading and swallowing his stroke. The two boys attacked simultaneously against the counterspin of the sphere that Dwyrin coalesced around himself. The sphere cracked in a rippling line and the girl struck through it. Dwyrin shuddered, his form collapsing around the pinpoint hole that knif
ed into him. The three were like quicksilver, gliding away from his attack, tearing long strips out of his defense. He leached the earth, but the currents of power there were far too deep to reach. Stones yielded their hearts to him and burst into powder at his feet. Lightning rippled and he sought to bind the two boy ghosts with a feint; one he caught and held in contest a moment, but the girl swept away the remainder of the sphere and knifed into the red-hot core of his being. The second boy followed her attack, shredding his connection with the earth. Darkness collapsed and left nothing.

  —|—

  Gasping, Dwyrin's true eyes stared into the sun. The swirling disk of Ra now rode in the sky, moments from passing into the clutter of stays, guides, and lines that suspended the woven net above the inner camp. A face obscured the sky. Dwyrin blinked. The girl's face resolved itself, sweat dripping from the side of her nose. Her eyes were slits. She thumbed back his eyelids in turn and slapped the side of his face lightly. Dwyrin choked and tried to sit up. Movement drew ragged pain across his back. Tears welled from his eyes, blinding him.

  "He's fine," he heard. "No worse than most. Some salve and a week and he'll be done."

  Gentle hands slid under Dwyrin as he gasped, and lifted him up. He blinked furiously, catching sight of a tent roof occluding the pale sky, before he was lain into a stretched canvas bunk. The sound of clinking coins echoed from the roof down to him. The two boys slid quietly into the corners of his vision. The blond one smiled encouragingly, the corner of his mouth stained with red juice.

  "Pomegranate?" he ventured. The other boy scowled, thick dark hair inching down over his eyes. He brushed it back as he leaned closer. Dwyrin turned a little toward him. The dark boy reached out of sight and brought a leather canteen with a knurled bronze lip to Dwyrin's mouth. Cool water spilled across his lips and he drank hungrily. The throb of his back was growing greater in his mind. Even before, on the frame, it had not itched so much. The blond boy broke a little of the pomegranate off and pushed it into Dwyrin's mouth. He bit down on the bitter seeds and felt them squeak aside before breaking. Sharp-tasting juice filled his mouth.